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The Doctor Was A Woman: Stories of the First Female Physicians on the Frontier

“Enss follows up Doctor Wore Petticoats with 10 more accounts of women healers who plied their trade during the early days of American frontier settlement. Women physicians encountered predictable resistance in the East, but out West, healers of Western medicine were scarce, offering these new physicians the chance to practice their skills in the community. Not surprisingly, women doctors faced criticism because people doubted their abilities and many considered a woman clinician to be “unwomanly.” However, Enss illuminates how their boldness and persistence earned them respect from frontier patients and other clinicians. At the end of each chapter, there’s a case study report written by that doctor on some aspects of her clinical experience, including plastic surgery, dentistry, autopsies, reproductive illnesses, and others.

Verdict:  A collection of tales about real superhero women and how they won respect. This title would be a good museum store book or as an adjunct resource for a senior high classroom module on the American West.”

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The Doctor Was a Woman: Stories of the First Female Physicians on the Frontier

The Doctor Was a Woman: Stories of the First Female Physicians on the Frontier is a women’s history that profiles ten selected female doctors who made their marks and helped patients in the days of the Wild West.

From Wyoming and Nevada to California, these women did more than treat gunshot wounds. They fought lung disease, pioneered dental techniques, often became the first women to practice medicine in their areas, and overcame much male resistance to the notion to achieve their goals.

Chris Enss outlines history in a reasoned manner, presenting instances where women were as prejudiced about the notion of female physicians as their male counterparts:

“Lillian had difficulties with female patients too. One elderly woman in town frequently asked Dr. Heath to make house calls but had no intention of paying her. The woman was a minister’s wife, and Lillian felt her behavior should have been better than the average person’s. She only responded to the woman’s calls for help a handful of times. Eventually, she refused to continue seeing her because the minister’s wife refused to compensate her for her services because she was a woman doctor.”

Thus, personal biographical sketches weave into community and Western history in a manner that represents all the perceptions, reactions, and influences on female physicians of the times.

Enss also includes footnoted references to source materials and notes to document this background, including a 1921 tuberculosis symptoms public health report and how women such as Dr. Sofie Herzog (who was employed by the railroad to treat its workers and patrons) made names for themselves against all odds. Black and white vintage photos pepper the story, bringing these people and times to life.

The Doctor Was a Woman reads with the drama of fiction and the authority of well-researched nonfiction. It is highly recommended for women’s history collections, American history holdings, libraries attractive to medical students and researchers, and general-interest audiences alike. Its powerful stories are sterling examples of early women who succeeded, yet are rarely mentioned in the chronicles of medical or American history.

In the aforementioned Sophie Herzog’s case:

“Although Sofie was employed with the railroad, she continued to maintain her own practice. Not only did she treat those suffering with everything from deep cuts to pneumonia, but she was also intent on finding cures for more serious ailments such as smallpox.”

To learn more about the first female physicians on the frontier read

The Doctor Was a Woman

Midwest Book Review

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Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

From the early 1920s to the mid-1930s, trick and fancy rider Bonnie Gray and her company were recognized as some of the best rodeo performers in the country.  The famous, all-around cowgirl solidified her place in the profession as an expert in the “under the belly crawl” stunt.  Riding quickly into the arena atop her horse, King Tut, Bonnie would drop down on the nearside of the horse, feed herself headfirst between the animal’s galloping legs, reach through, haul herself up the off side, and jump back into the saddle again.  Audiences from Manhattan to Cheyenne were dazzled by the skill and daring it took to execute the death-defying trick.

Bonnie Jean Gray was a natural athlete.  Born in Kettle Falls, Washington, in 1891, she learned to ride on her family’s ranch.  She was also a gifted musician.  An accomplished pianist, she attended the University of Idaho where she majored in music and participated in a variety of sports including track and tennis.

Among her many other abilities, Bonnie had a talent for medicine.  During World War I, she studied nursing at a military post in Montana.  She utilized her nursing expertise assisting her brother who was a doctor in Arizona.  She helped deliver many babies and tended to those struck down with influenza in 1917 and 1918.

Bonnie’s interest in trick riding was something she’d had since when she was a little girl.  She decided to pursue the sport in 1918 and, in 1922, made her professional debut.  She participated in some of the biggest rodeos across the country and in Canada.  In a short time, she had earned the title as the World’s Champion Woman Rider.

According to the February 23, 1923, edition of the Deming Headlight, Bonnie had charmed the fans by her overall look and attracted attention as the only woman to have ridden bulls used in the bullfights in Mexico.  “Is she pretty?” the article posed.  “Yes, in a softly, feminine way, with a row of dazzling white teeth that show no traces of dental adornment.  She’s fearless in the saddle as well as beautiful.”

In June 1930, Bonnie married trick rider Donald Harris in Los Angeles, California.  The bridal party was on horseback, and the ceremony was held in an elaborately decorated arena with more than a hundred mounted guests in attendance.

Bonnie and Donald’s marriage was a volatile one.  Donald was physically abusive, and, by August 1932, the couple was divorced.

After the divorce was finalized, Bonnie left the rodeo world to become a motion picture stuntwoman.  She doubled for popular western film stars Tom Mix, Tim McCoy, Hoot Gibson, and Ken Maynard.  One of the most elaborate and dangerous stunts she performed on camera involved her and the horse the studio had her ride.  The pair jumped a clump of brush and hurtled down a ten-foot cliff.  Bonnie was paid $10,000 for the stunt, but vowed she’d never agree to participate in anything else so hazardous again.

Bonnie Gray Harris died on April 28, 1988, at the age of ninety-seven.  She is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, California.

To learn more about stuntwomen like Bonnie Gray read

Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

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Cowboys, Creatures, and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

Reel cowgirl Ruth Roland portrayed Pearl Marvin in a dozen silent films in The Perils of Pauline series between 1915 and 1917. Fans were on the edge of their seats watching the spunky actress ride her way in and out of trouble while solving crimes.  They waited in suspended animation for the film operator to change reels so they could learn the fate of the lead character. In the stuffy darkness of the theater the piano player tried, unsuccessfully, to quiet the audience’s nerves with a tasteful rendition of “Hearts and Flowers” to a gum-chewing accompaniment. Yet the suspense was a terrific ordeal, and the projector flickered out just as Ruth, all lost save honor, lay roped to a filthy pallet, with a leering bad guy rubbing his hands in the doorway. All wondered if the heroine would make it out alive!  Audiences loved Ruth.

Ruth Roland, who took Pearl White’s place in the hearts of the hair-breadth escape fans when Pearl deserted Hollywood for Europe just before World War I, remained for a heart-throbbing period the star of the serial “flickers.”  Whether in chaps or elegant gown, Ruth was always just slipping by the flick of an eyelid from the most appalling situation in her pictures; and with an astute comprehension of interest “build-up” her director always left her, at the conclusion of each performance, tied to a railroad track with the express thundering around the bed, or shackled in a sinister basement while the water crept upward from knees to waist, or leaping on horseback from the edge of a cliff to escape “a fate worse then death.”

Born in San Francisco on August 26, 1892, the daughter of John R. Roland, a newspaperman who had worked on the New York Sun and San Francisco Chronicle, Ruth began her stage career at the age of three, when she went on tour with Edward Holden’s “Cinderella” company.  Ruth’s screen career began in 1910. “I reached Los Angeles on April Fool’s Day,” she once related, “and stepped out at once and got a job. I fixed up a stage sketch with my horse and we were booked to perform in Los Angeles and dozens of nearby towns.”  Shortly thereafter, she was signed with the Kalem Film Company earning $115 a week. Her first picture was The Last Shot, one of the earliest westerns made. In ten years, she made a hefty sum making movies and she invested her earnings in real estate.

In the late 20’s Ruth retired from the screen to devote her entire time to her extensive real estate holdings, consisting principally of business lots in the Wilshire-Fairfax district in Los Angeles. At one time she reputedly had property worth three and a half million dollars.

Ruth did her own stunts in all her pictures until she was thrown from a horse. The accident caused injury to her spine which gave her much pain in later years. She was diagnosed with cancer in early 1937. The illness took her life on September 22 of the same year.

Ruth Roland was thirty-nine years old when she died.

To learn more about cowgirl stuntwomen like Ruth read

Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures.

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Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

In many of the films actress Anne Jeffreys made for Republic Pictures she played a damsel in perilous situations.  Neither the studio nor the performer could imagine how much those movies would affect the lives of young ticket buyers.  A letter from a fan written to the motion picture studio in the summer of 1945 expressed what many males were thinking about the talented Ms. Jeffreys.

“The first time I saw her [Anne Jeffreys] in a movie her lovely image was secured permanently,” the admirer wrote.  “She was not only staggeringly beautiful, but kind and warm, and understanding.  If she only knew how many times I’ve swept her off a teetering bridge just before it collapsed; how many hoodlums I flattened with my powerful fists as they tried to force you, kicking and screaming, into their black limousine or into a stagecoach, for God knows what evil purpose; how many times, as you cradled my head in your arms (after I just saved your life AGAIN) and tearfully asked ‘Are you all right?’  I’ve replied:  ‘It’s nothing, just a bullet wound in the chest.’

Born Anne Carmichael on January 26, 1926, in Goldsboro, North Carolina, Anne was one of Republic Pictures most versatile leading ladies.  She played everything from a mobster’s girlfriend to a singing cowgirl.

Anne Jeffreys began appearing in motion pictures in 1942.  In the beginning she played a number of background characters in such popular Republic Pictures as Moonlight Masquerade and The Flying Tigers.  In 1943 Anne finally got her chance to costar in two movies opposite Bill Elliott and Gabby Hayes.  The pictures, Calling Wild Bill Elliott and The Man from Thunder River, were westerns.  Newspapers across the country reported on the studio’s decision to cast Anne in the film’s main female role.

There were seven pictures in the Bill Elliott series in addition to Calling Wild Bill Elliott and A Man from Thunder River; there was Bordertown Gun Fighters, Wagon Trains West, Death Valley Manhunt, Blazing Action, and Hidden Valley Outlaws.  Audiences loved Bill Elliott’s leading lady and referred to her as the Diva of the Hoss Opera.  The Bill Elliot series contained enough shooting, fighting, hard riding, and singing to meet the demand of the western fans.

Anne and the other major players in the series made personal appearances at parades, rodeos, and department stores.  They also traveled the country helping to sell war bonds during World War II.

Anne’s time with Republic ended when the Elliott series was concluded.  She went on to star in several movies for various Hollywood studios, most without her horse.  She made the leap to television in the 50s, receiving renewed fame in the program Topper based on the popular film of the same name.  Her husband, Robert Sterling, starred with her in the series.  Anne guest starred in numerous television shows and performed on stage in theatres from Broadway to London.  From 1984 to 2004 she was a regular on General Hospital.  Singing cowgirl and spirited heroine of Republic Pictures westerns Anne Jeffreys, died on September 27, 2017, at her home in Los Angeles at the age of ninety-four.

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Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

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Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

Anita Bush was the first Black American actress to star in a Western. Born on September 1, 1883, she began her career in the field of entertainment as a dancer and was only sixteen years old when she was hired to appear in Vaudeville with a comedy act known as William and Walker. Silent film director Richard Norman saw Bush perform in a Broadway play and sought her out to take part in a film opposite rodeo sensation Bill Pickett.

“If you want an experienced rider, I can’t say that I am one,” Bush wrote to Norman about what would become her leading lady role in The Bull Dogger, a Western that also was Pickett’s first film. “But I have lots of nerve and learn anything quickly. I can row, drive, ride a wheel, sail a boat, dance and do most anything required in pictures.”

Norman was so certain The Bull Dogger and Bush would be hits, he cast her in his next film entitled The Crimson Skull. The plot of the Western kidnap film was unique for the time. To rid the range of a gang of outlaws that are rustling cattle and robbing the banks and stagecoaches, cowhand Bob Calem, working on the gang-leader’s superstitions, dons a skeleton-costume to strike fear into the gang.

Bush was proud of the two films she made with Norman because they went against type. She was tired of seeing Black Americans cast primarily in bumbling comedic roles. She wanted to prove Black Americans were capable of taking on serious, dramatic work. To that end, she founded the Anita Bush Players of Harlem, a famous acting troupe that later became known as the Lafayette Players.

Not only was she talented on-screen but she proved a tough negotiator, sometimes demanding – and getting – a salary higher that her leading man. And, she was undaunted when facing new challenges.

Anita Bush passed away at her home in New York on February 16, 1974 at the age of ninety-one.

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Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures.

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Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

Mary Wiggins worshipped excitement. As a double for such screen stars as Barbara Stanwyck, Dorothy Lamour, Norma Shearer and Claudette Colbert she loved to climb the facades of tall buildings, to leap from a running horse to a speeding automobile, to fly a plane while blindfolded. Wiggins was one of the top stuntwomen during the 20s, 30s, and 40s.

Born on November 8, 1910, in Plant City, Florida, she joined a traveling carnival straight out of high school and got her first screen credit in the short film The Campus Vamp in 1928. Her stunts in films included diving, crashing cars, parachuting and flying planes.

Off the screen Wiggins was a dainty, feminine person. But on the job she thought nothing of diving 80 feet from a cliff into five feet of water, parachuting from planes and walking on their wings, crashing cars through flaming walls, or driving motorcycles through brick buildings. “It’s just the way I happened to pick to earn a living,” she said once. “I guess I like thrills.

Before joining the Women Air Force Service Pilots in 1943, Wiggins was in great demand because her figure closely resembled that of many screen beauties. Doubling for Loretta Young in the film Call of the Wild, Wiggins once dived into turbulent rapids in water 15 degrees below zero. The next day she let herself be dragged down an icy bank by a team of runaway sled dogs. In The Bride Came C.O.D. she bailed out of a plane flying upside down.

When she left to report for duty as a WASP to fly as a ferry pilot for the army, she was the highest-paid stuntwoman in Hollywood. When she was discharged she used her savings to go into the furniture business with a friend. She lost all her money in the venture and was unable to find regular work in her former profession.

Despondent over her financial situation, Wiggins decided to take her own life. The dark-eyed daredevil who performed hundreds of perilous feats for high-priced stars without a scratch, was found in the backyard of her home, a bullet from a .25 caliber automatic through her head.

She was thirty-five-years-old when she died on December 19, 1945.

To learn more about daring stuntwomen like Mary Wiggins read

Cowboys, Creatures and Cowboys: The Story of Republic Pictures

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Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

Academy Award winning actress Mercedes McCambridge portrayed Joan Crawford’s vindictive nemesis in Republic Pictures’ psychological Western Johnny Guitar. She was also Rock Hudson’s strong-willed older sister in Giant.

A versatile, radio-trained character actress with a strong resonant voice, McCambridge specialized in playing forceful, domineering characters on screen. Many film critics believed she outshined Crawford in Johnny Guitar. Crawford wanted Claire Trevor for the part of Emma in the film, but she wasn’t available. McCambridge had a way of commanding a scene and audience attention – less performance, more of a presence. Crawford immediately resented the kudos afforded McCambridge by the crew and consistently referred to her as ‘an actress who hadn’t worked in ten years – an excellent example of a rabble-rouser.’

When McCambridge delivered a stirring speech to the posse in the film, her performance received a round of applause from the crew. Crawford was watching the scene from a hilltop in the distance, grabbed McCambridge’s costumes out of her dressing room, and strewn them along a nearby road.

McCambridge was born in Joliet, Illinois, on St. Patrick’s Day in 1916 and grew up on a farm in Blackstone, Illinois, until attending Catholic high school in Chicago. While majoring in English and theatre in Mundelein College in Chicago in 1936, she caught the attention of NBC Radio’s Chicago program director and was signed to a five-year contract. From radio she made the leap to film.

In 1949 she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the role of Sadie Burke in the film All the King’s Men. She nominated for the same award for work her work in the film Giant in 1956.

McCambridge success on screen didn’t translate to her personal life. She struggled desperately with alcoholism. She was married and divorced twice and in 1987, her son, John Lawrence Markle, 45, killed his wife and two daughters, then committed suicide.

McCambridge passed away on March 2, 2004. She was eighty-seven-years-old.

To learn more about McCambridge and the movie Johnny Guitar read

Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

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Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

One of Republic Pictures most popular actresses was one of the motion picture industries most troubled.  Her name was Gail Russell.  Russell, a beautiful brunette with dark, blue eyes, was a gifted talent who dreamed of becoming a commercial artist.  She was born Elizabeth L. Russell in Chicago on September 21, 1924.  Throughout her childhood she was painfully shy and often hid under her parents’ piano whenever guests came to their home.

The young girl only felt completely comfortable when she was sketching various people and places in her sphere of influence.  She began drawing at the age of five years old and was considered exceptional by most that saw her sketches and paintings.

When she was in her late teens, her mother, Gladys Russell, encouraged her to set aside her drawing pencils and venture into films.  Russell was fourteen when her parents moved to Los Angeles so their daughter could pursue their dream of her becoming a star.  She attended Santa Monica High School and as soon as she graduated, she auditioned for Paramount Pictures and signed a contract with the studio for $50 a week.

Russell’s shyness followed her as she began her career.  Acting instructors were hired to help her overcome her timidity, but it never completely subsided.

In 1946 Russell starred in the first of four films she made for Republic Pictures.  John Wayne coproduced The Angel and the Badman and specifically requested Gail Russell to play opposite him in the western written and directed by James Edward Grant.  Wayne was moved by her quiet, unassuming personality.  He treated her with the respect and kindness she’d not known from many other leading men or producers.  The two became good friends while working on the film.  Wayne was protective of Russell.  He recognized vulnerability in the actress some could have taken advantage of.  He was a father figure to Russell and she considered him to be a fiercely honest individual.

She was a success on screen, but her personal life was less so. Russell spent a month in a sanitarium learning to deal with the humiliation and hurt she experienced from a public divorce.  Once she was released, she resorted to drinking.  On November 26, 1953, Russell was arrested for drunk driving.  At her hearing two months later, the troubled actress was placed on two years’ probation with the condition she refrain from intoxicants, stay away from places where liquor was sold, and obtain medical treatment.  She was also ordered to pay a $150 fine.

On August 26, 1961, less than four years after her pledge about setting her life on a new course, Gail was found dead in her apartment.  She had lost her battle with alcohol.  Her body was discovered by neighbors that had stopped by to check on her.  Russell was lying on the floor next to an empty bottle of Vodka.  There were additional bottles of alcohol strewn about her home.

Gail Russell was thirty-six years old when she passed away.

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Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

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Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

Claire Trevor made famous the role of Dallas the soiled dove in the film Stagecoach. With a voice once described as sounding like delicious trouble, she was one of the most sought-after supporting actresses during the 1930s and 40s.

She was born in New York City – movie buffs disagree whether it was 1909 or 1910 – to a Belfast, Ireland-born mother and a strict Paris born father who had a custom tailor shop on Fifth Avenue.

As a child, Trevor dreamed of being a ballerina. But along the way she became involved in church plays and fell in love with the stage. After studying art briefly at Columbia University, she attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. She had to drop out after six months, though, because her father’s business failed during the Depression, and he told her that she would have to help out.

“That shocked the hell out of me,” she later recalled. “We weren’t rich, but I never thought of money as being a worry, so it scared me. I thought, ‘What do I know how to do? Acting is the only thing I know how to do, and to get a job in the middle of the Depression in New York was not easy.

After a successful run on Broadway at the age of twenty-one, Trevor made her film debut in the early Western, Life in the Raw, and between 1933 and 1938, starred in over twenty movies including Dante’s Inferno, Dead End and The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse starring Humphrey Bogart. In 1939, she co-starred with an unknown Wayne in Ford’s classic, Stagecoach, and is one of few stars to have ever received top billing over The Duke.

Trevor appeared in other popular Westerns including Honky Tonk with The King of Hollywood, Clark Gable, and The Desperadoes starring Randolph Scott and Glenn Ford. She became known for her hard-boiled blondes in film noirs, winning her only Oscar for her performance in John Huston‘s Key Largo, but her unconventional Western roles popularized the bad girl of the Wild West making her a cornerstone of the genre.

The Oscar winning actress died on April 8, 2000, at the age of ninety.

To learn more about film legends like Claire Trevor read

Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures